Before it gets lost in the back pages of forum topics, let’s bring a particular post about retinal detachment risks to the blog.

Retinal detachment risks can be considerable for high myopes.  It doesn’t begin to make it on the radar of things to worry about until you are in the double digits with myopia (which you never should be, under any circumstances, with just basic preventative steps).  If you have more than a -10 diopter correction, use it daily for multiple hours while you work up-close, and do so as you age beyond 50 years old – your retinal detachment risks are becoming quite real.

This is very much an avoidable potential cause of blindness.  As some incentive, let’s look at Alex’ post:

Don Rosa is one of the comic artists who drew Donald Duck (i.e., he did “close work” for a living). He eventually quit the business and gave his reasons why in this article: http://career-end.donrosa.de/ . His reason #2 — the deterioration of his eyesight — is the most graphic and frightening account of retinal detachment that one can ever read. If anyone ever needs motivation to end myopia, this article is it. Sometimes we think only about the convenience aspects of good vision, but it has definite health/quality of life issues as well. Since the whole article is long, I just excerpted the part about his eyesight. Unlucky for Rosa, he never even understood the origins of myopia (although I suppose some myopia is congenital) or how it can be cured. (Excerpt follows) 

[retinal detachment risks]

Reason #2: My @#$%& poor eyesight!

I have suffered from congenital myopia since birth. When my parents first realized that it was not normal for a 5-year-old to sit with his nose on the TV screen, I have worn thick eyeglasses. Well, I grew up wearing glasses so it never bothered me. Perhaps it’s because I was near-sighted (myopia) that I enjoyed doing things all my life that involved close-up viewing, like reading comics and drawing very detailed art. So I do not complain about the first 55 years of my @#$%& poor eyesight since perhaps it is the reason (or one of them) that I am writing an autobiography in a 9-volume book set of my own comic stories.

But extreme myopia starts causing serious problems as age progresses. Around 2006 I started experiencing cloudiness of vision as I moved my eyes, though the cloudiness never stopped at my focal point. I was told that was simply my wretched eyes starting to fall apart. Next, in 2007, I started having trouble getting my eyes to line up correctly. This is a small problem fixed by prismed eyeglass lenses. However, by 2007 I could no longer see well enough through my glasses to draw normally. I had to resort to drawing without my glasses and with my nose almost literally touching the paper. This was very tedious! But it’s the only way I could go on. As the 20+ years of my professional comics career progressed, my speed was constantly getting much slower rather than increasing.

By early 2008 I was at a point in my life where I needed to make a decision. I wanted to continue making stories of my favorite characters, but (due to reason #1) I had lost my enthusiasm, which was the only thing that had kept me going for the previous 15 years. The depression, the burn-out, the failing eyes… I could not decide what to do. Then in March 2008, my body seemed to say “Can’t make up your mind? Try this !” And the back fell off my left eye.

Let me as briefly as possible describe a retinal detachment with the hope none of you need to ever experience one in real life. It happens mostly to people in their 90’s, or to victims of extreme myopia like yours truly. Myopia is a result of a distortion of the shape of the eyeball at birth, and if this distortion is great enough, it puts a strain on the retina, the ultra-delicate membrane on the back of the eyeball. After 57 years my left retina had all it could stand and started peeling away from my eye which results in blindness. I’d noticed a tiny blind spot at the edge of my vision, so I made a doctor’s appointment for that Saturday, the only day I normally drive into town. But during the week the blind spot was starting to spread and had reached my left focal point by the time I was finally examined on Saturday. I’ll always recall March 17, 2008, as the most frightening day of my life. The eye doctor told my wife to recline the seat of the car and that I should lie as nearly horizontal as possible while she drove me to the emergency surgery, while being careful not to hit any bumps! What?! My left retina was near to peeling completely off my eye, and if a shock had ripped it the rest of the way loose, permanent blindness might result. I was having emergency eye surgery within the hour — I’m sure that if I’d had some days advance notice of the procedure, I would have been even more terrified.

I was later told that old folks who’ve had retinal detachment surgery and open heart surgery always say they’d prefer more heart surgery any day. The surgery itself is not the problem… it’s the recovery. After sealing the retinal tears with laser surgery, the retina must be pushed back against the back of the eyeball so it can reattach itself and heal. The only way to accomplish that is to drain the liquid out of the eyeball and fill it with a gas bubble. Then the patient must face down so that the bubble can press the retina back into place. Face down every moment, day and night, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as many months as it takes the bubble to gradually disappear. This is even more difficult to accomplish than it sounds. During the day I knelt in a special chair with my face resting downward on a cushioned support, reading or watching TV through a mirror. At night I slept sitting up with my face pointing straight down into my lap resting on a pile of pillows. This lasted for about 2 months. And did nothing at all to help my depression.

But more importantly it did help my eye, but only a bit. The retina successfully reattached, but at about a 10 degree angle off level, and with scarring resulting from how damaged it was before the emergency surgery. This scarring makes the vision through the eye distorted, making straight lines look wavy. I didn’t know this as yet since, after the surgery, my left eye vision was very blurry until the 6-month mark when the surgeon could again go into that same eye, remove the cataracts caused by surgery, and replace the eye lens. Afterwards, the left lens in my eyeglasses was very thin due to a new lens in my eye, while the right eyeglass lens was as thick as it had ever been. And as you may know, vision through a thick eyeglass lens is greatly reduced from normal size vision.

Therefore, the result was that I had a very tiny view through my right eye, while my left eye had a view that was tilted 10 degrees, distorted and very large. So I could see but I saw double, just as you would see if you crossed your eyes very slightly. And yet I do not complain! I feel lucky that I can see at all. I had further minor laser surgery in both eyes to prevent existing retinal tears (and there were many) from resulting in another retinal detachment.

Anyway, this was the immediate reason why I quit. It was definitely no longer possible to draw the kind of art that made me so popular with all the entertaining “needless and irritating details”. I was able to do the new title page illustrations for this book series since I still had one “good” eye and that I can draw those very large; I must remove my glasses, put an eyepatch over my bad (worse?) eye, and still draw with my nose on the paper. And take even longer than before, it that’s possible.

After the surgery, many fans have asked me: if I can no longer draw, why can’t I write Duck stories for others to draw? The answer is that, philosophically, I will no longer put any work into this system due to reason #1…

I want to thank Alex for this detailed account of how retinal detachment happens, retinal detachment risks, and the consequences, if you are very, very lucky to catch it immediately.   The full post topic is here:  https://endmyopia.org/myopia-forums/topic/a-motivator-the-don-rosa-story/

Avoidable Tragedy: Retinal detachment risks can be reduced significantly, by reducing myopia.

Alex is participating in the program, and hopefully will be back reporting some vision improvements in due course.  Likewise, you want to take some of the very simple steps to better manage your prescription use, and understand and limit the eyestrain that causes myopia.

Enjoy some healthy eyesight!